Application Support Manager at Ness, Bangalore
Application Support Manager at Ness in Bangalore. Contract. Apply with swipeandhired.
Own the end-to-end delivery of application support for hundreds of applications, lead the transition of the application to new teams and run a lean, automation-driven support organization that continuously reduces effort through modern ization, cons oli dation and in novation.
Key responsibilities
Transition & takeover
- Plan and lead the t ransition : due diligence, knowledge transfer, shadow and reverse-shadow phases, readiness gates and go-live sign-off.
- Define the target operating model for the new teams , application clustering by portfolio/technology, and coverage model (L2/L3, on-call, follow-the-sun if needed).
- Identify and mitigate transition risks, especially for the Critical/High applications
- Ensure complete knowledge capture: runbooks, architecture views, SOPs, access, credentials handover and CMDB data quality.
Service delivery & governance
- Own SLAs/KPIs (MTTR, backlog, SLA adherence, first-time fix, CSAT) and lead monthly service reviews and QBRs with client stakeholders.
- Run ITIL processes: incident, problem, change, release, knowledge and major-incident management.
- Manage ~14,400 tickets/year with a smaller team through demand reduction, problem elimination and shift-left .
- Manage budget, capacity planning, contractor onboarding and performance within the commercial envelope.
Incident, defect & task management
- Run day-to-day management of incidents, defects and client-created tasks in ServiceNow/Jira: assignment, prioritization, SLA tracking and closure quality.
- Run daily stand-ups/triage with the Tech Lead and align the backlog priorities agreed with the client via the Service Client Manager.
- Balance capacity between break-fix, defect resolution and client task delivery; flag capacity risks early.
- Own problem management so recurring incidents become permanent fixes.
Modernization, merging & innovation
- Partner with portfolio owners on application rationalization
- Build a roadmap for consolidation/merging of overlapping applications, decommissioning and cloud/SaaS modernization.
- Drive automation (self-healing, monitoring, AIOps, GenAI/Copilot-assisted support) to deliver measurable FTE and cost reduction year on year.
- Present business cases for modernization initiatives with clear ROI and risk.
People leadership
- Hire and onboard the team including Tech leads and core/key team members
- Lead, coach and grow Tech Leads and engineers; build a multi-skilled, cross-trained team that can cover many applications.
- Foster a culture of ownership, continuous improvement and knowledge sharing.
Required qualifications & skills
- Proven track record leading application support, including the transition/takeover.
- Strong ITIL v4 knowledge and hands-on ServiceNow (or similar ITSM) experience.
- Experience running lean, outcome-based support models and achieving productivity gains through automation.
- Good understanding of cloud-hosted application landscapes (AWS primary; GCP/Azure a plus ), SaaS and COTS.
- Experience with application portfolio rationalization (Gartner TIME or similar) and modernization programs.
- Excellent stakeholder management, executive communication and commercial awareness (budgets, SOWs, SLAs).
Nice to have
- ITIL v4 Managing Professional, PMP/PRINCE2, AWS certification.
- Experience in media, music or entertainment (royalties, rights, metadata, supply chain, D2C).
- Exposure to AIOps, observability platforms (Datadog, Dynatrace, Splunk) and GenAI for support.
Core competencies
- Ownership mindset and calm under pressure in high-impact incidents.
- Fast learner able to support many applications with varied technologies.
- Clear written and verbal communication in English with business and technical stakeholders.
- Continuous-improvement and automation-first thinking.